Technical Field
This disclosure relates generally to fasteners, and more particularly to rotational fasteners.
Background Art
Fasteners, such as screws, nails, staples, and so forth, are used in a wide variety of applications to couple items together. For example, a nail may be used to join two pieces of wood together. Similarly, a screw may be used to couple to pieces of metal together.
Fasteners are frequently used in electronic applications to couple housing portions together. Illustrating by way of example, a screw may be used to fasten a cover to a terminal box or a junction box. Similarly, screws may be used to couple components together within a housing. Fans, circuit boards, or other components may be coupled to the housing by fasteners so that they do not move when active.
In a cable television amplifier application, fasteners may be used to couple electronic shields around circuitry. For instance, amplifiers used to distribute radio-frequency video, data, or telephony signals employ large currents to apply gain to these signals. Such amplifiers can emit a large amount of electromagnetic noise. Frequently shielding is required, with the shield tied to electrical ground, so that this electromagnetic noise does not affect the operation of other electronic components.
Presently, Phillips head screws are used to couple shielding metal to components of a chassis that are coupled to electrical ground. For optimal shielding, the shielding metal needs to be coupled to electrical ground at several locations. Accordingly, in some applications as many as twelve or more screws are required to couple a single metal shield to the device housing.
The use of so many screws is problematic. Illustrating by example, when a field technician is working on an amplifier module, they much remove each and every screw to make link configurations and adjustments. When they test the circuitry, each and every screw must be replaced for proper grounding. When making diagnostic repairs, such as alignment and testing of the amplifier, a technician may remove and replace each and every screw several times, which is tedious, time consuming, and costly.
It would be advantageous to have an improved fastener for use in electronic and other applications.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present disclosure.